Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google has already pulled six products in 2023

toolhub.tech

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 371 posts

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#71

Post by zztop44 »

ghaff wrote: post #31
chongli wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never worked at Google so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Everything I've heard (mostly on HN) about working there is that there are simply too many perverse incentives to abandon products. People get promoted for creating exciting new products and then leave those products behind at their new position. Up-and-comers are also incentivized to do the same thing. There seems to be no appetite whatsoever for h…

Put in concrete terms, do you want to be one of the two engineers exiled to maintaining Reader because you pissed someone off to keep the geeks off Google’s back?

For $400k a year I’d be okay with it yeah

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#72

Post by jsnell »

imgabe wrote: post #63
ed_mercer wrote: post #28

Why does Google get grilled so badly for pulling products? Don’t other companies do the exact same thing, and isn’t it their full right to abandon projects when it no longer makes sense?

Other companies kill projects when they’ve clearly failed and basically nobody is using. Google will kill things that are moderately successful and people are dependent on, but they aren’t a blockbuster success that makes a difference compared to their ad revenue. But mostly we’ve just never forgiven them for killing Google Reader. And we never will.

Which product on this list do you think was "moderately successful" and had "people depend on it"?

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#73

Post by [deleted] »

onion2k wrote: post #43
LeBit wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Search is in great perils because of ChatGPT.

It could be. I don't think Google are likely to just roll over and let OpenAI/MSFT take that market though. Obviously Google will try to compete. Maybe they'll fail, maybe they won't. If nothing else, as a user of these tools, it's going to be exciting to see some innovation in search UIs for the first time in decades.

[deleted]

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#74

Post by rippercushions »

adamors wrote: post #35
ed_mercer wrote: post #28

Why does Google get grilled so badly for pulling products? Don’t other companies do the exact same thing, and isn’t it their full right to abandon projects when it no longer makes sense?

What other company has a literal graveyard of products? https://killedbygoogle.com

This exists: https://killedbymicrosoft.info/

But if you search for "killed by Amazon", you get back news articles about people actually dying in its warehouses.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/amazon-wa...

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#76

Post by mejutoco »

ed_mercer wrote: post #28

Why does Google get grilled so badly for pulling products? Don’t other companies do the exact same thing, and isn’t it their full right to abandon projects when it no longer makes sense?

That is why they are getting grilled and not taken to court.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#77

Post by belter »

adamors wrote: post #35
ed_mercer wrote: post #28

Why does Google get grilled so badly for pulling products? Don’t other companies do the exact same thing, and isn’t it their full right to abandon projects when it no longer makes sense?

What other company has a literal graveyard of products? https://killedbygoogle.com

https://killedbygoogle.com/

https://gcemetery.co/

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#78

Post by eknkc »

creshal wrote: post #49
Paul-Craft wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely the people working at Google understand how all these shutdowns look to outsiders, right? Yeah, about like this: https://killedbygoogle.com/ I don't really care if Google is unable, unwilling, or uninterested in supporting anything that isn't G-Suite, search, or ads. Their track record is more than enough for me to dismiss using Google Cloud Platform, or even saving anything of any importance to Google Drive…

Even G-Suite isn't really getting that much support, it's on life support at best. There's so many missing features and bugs and just painfully unergonomic workflows that have been ignored for 10+ years at this point; the long overdue and minimal UI facelift recently didn't really solve any pain points.

It is not compatible with a lot of stuff. Can't subscribe to youtube premium family. Can't use android automotive. Can't use this that etc. I switched to my old basic google account for google services and probably move my domains away from gsuite at this point.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#79

Post by digdigdag »

Beyond the serious dependability questions Google raises, I feel bad for the millions of units of OnHub, Nest, Stadia, and other hardware that are still perfectly functional, but rendered obsolete because of what amounts to high level, corporate financial decisions.

Any company engaging in mass market IoT sales should be compelled, for the sake of consumer confidence and protection, of an "exit plan" to allow fully localized control of these devices -- independent of an upstream server or system.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#80

Post by detourdog »

usrusr wrote: post #18
bigyikes wrote: post #6

Surely the people working at Google understand how all these shutdowns look to outsiders, right? I have to imagine so… they’re smart people, and a ton of them lurk here on HN. It’s interesting to me that they continue to spawn and nix products like this despite the reputation damage it causes. Anyone wanna bet on if/when Bard gets axed?

What would you consider a lesson lernt from that perception? Never ever start anything new unless you want to bet the company on running it forever?

GOOG went wrong when they stopped using XMPP, CALDAV and forked Webkit. Those actions broke cross platform development and re-ignited the browser wars. I see those moves as totally motivated by privacy invasion of the users. Never trust a free product with advertising.
Post reply on HN